Los Alamos National Laboratory

Their goal is to remove 3,706 cubic meters of TRU waste by June 30, 2014 from Technical Area 54 and Material Disposal Area G.

So how much is 3,706 cubic meters?

It’s a lot. A cubic meter is a unit of measurement for volume. The 3,706 cubic meters translates to roughly 130,876.154 cubic feet.

Dan Cox, the deputy associate director for Environmental Programs at the lab, told the Northern New Mexico Citizens Advisory Board that the waste is classified into three categories. Seventy percent of the waste is in oversized containers, 20 percent are in drums and 10 percent are in standard waste boxes.

George Rael, the assistant manager for environmental programs at the NNSA Los Alamos Site Office, admitted to the Northern New Mexico Citizens Advisory Board Thursday what a fair amount of people already surmised.

“It’s not possible for DOE to meet the Consent Order in 2015,” Rael told the group assembled for the meeting at the Cities of Gold Hotel Conference Center.

Rael said budget cuts, technical challenges and a shift in priorities have caused the lack of progress on cleanup.

The New Mexico Environment Department, however, said it was not changing the deadline.

POJOAQUE, N.M. (AP) — Bowing to pressure from the state, Los Alamos National Laboratory officials said Thursday they would speed up removal of the thousands of drums of radioactive waste that has been sitting on lab property for decades.

But they won't be able to meet some other deadlines in an agreement that calls for the bulk of the lab's legacy waste and contaminated sites to be remediated by 2015.

Los Alamos lab director Charles McMillan had been on the job for about a month when June 26 rolled around.

He had just taken over for Mike Anastasio, who retired.

McMillan will never forget where he was on June 26 when the Las Conchas Fire started. He will never forget because it also was his anniversary.

“I remember exactly what I was doing; June 26th is also our wedding anniversary,” McMillan said this week. “I was rehearsing the Telemann f minor sonata for recorder at my house with Rokkopelli, the baroque chamber music group I perform with, and looking forward to celebrating with Janet.

In an annual performance evaluation report Los Alamos National Security, LLC, received 89 percent of the available performance-based fee from the National Nuclear Security Administration for managing and operating LANL in fiscal year 2011.

The total of that fee was $83.7 million, according to the Albuquerque Journal.

NNSA also awarded LANS an additional contract year, extending the current agreement through 2017.

“The award is a tribute to our employees’ dedication to delivering on our commitments,” said lab director Charlie McMillan. “2011 was an outstanding year for science and mission execution at the laboratory.”

An essential question confronting neuroscientists and computer vision researchers alike is how objects can be identified by simply “looking” at an image.
Introspectively, it is known that the human brain solves this problem very well. It is known that we only have to look at something to know what it is.
But teaching a computer to “know” what it’s looking at is far harder.

Los Alamos National Laboratory trackers will use state-of-the-art technology to mark the course taken by St. Nick and his eight tiny and highly efficient reindeer. Visit LAMonitor.com for a live link beginning at 6 a.m. Dec. 24 to see his whirlwind journey.
“We expect Santa and his team to arrive in Northern New Mexico about midnight on Christmas Eve,” said scientist Diane Roussel-Dupré of the Lab’s Space Data Systems group.
Los Alamos supports Santa trackers at North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which has been following Santa’s Christmas runs since the 1950s.
The Santa tracking program began in 1955 when a Sears, Roebuck ad included a misprinted phone number for Santa.

The latest in a series of winter storms to pound the area with heavy snowfall is wreaking havoc with commuters and holiday travel plans.

As a result, the Los Alamos National Laboratory is on a staggered schedule for Friday, Dec. 23. Los Alamos residents with children or other dependent care report at 10 a.m. Carpoolers report at 10 a.m. Remainder of workforce reports at 10.45 a.m.

Check back with LAMonitor.com for updates on road closures and travel updates throughout the duration of the storm.

Los Alamos National Laboratory today announced the signing of a new Umbrella CRADA (Cooperative Research and Development Agreement) with EMC Corporation.
Together, LANL and EMC will enhance, design, build, test, and deploy new cutting-edge technologies in an effort to meet some of the nation’s most difficult information technology challenges.
The CRADA involves six general categories of technology development in which LANL and EMC will collaborate over the next five years, including high-performance computing (HPC), data storage, cyber security, data sharing and mobility, cloud computing, large-scale analytics, and materials science.

Last week, lab director Charlie McMillan established the Los Alamos National Laboratory Integrated Stewardship Council, which would help make financial decisions in order to achieve $200 million in savings across the lab.

In a memo obtained by the Los Alamos Monitor, Rich Marquez, who reports to McMillan as part of the senior management team at the lab, wrote that “Organizations have been asked to execute only those employment and procurement actions that are essential. In addition, they have been asked to implement a 20 percent cost savings (from FY11 levels) in foreign and domestic travel and in M&S expenditures.